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Cable Lobby Steams Up Over FCC Set-Top Box Competition Plan (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Cable TV industry lobby groups expressed their displeasure with a Federal Communications Commission plan to bring competition to the set-top box market, which could help consumers watch TV on different devices and thus avoid paying cable box rental fees.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that would force pay-TV companies to give third parties access to TV content, letting hardware makers build better set-top boxes. Customers would be able to watch all the TV channels they're already paying cable companies for, but on a device that they don't have to rent from them. The rules could also bring TV to tablets and other devices without need for a rented set-top box. The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
Maybe some manufacturer will make a box that doesn't draw 20 watts when it's turned off.
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Cable TV industry lobby groups expressed their displeasure with a Federal Communications Commission plan to bring competition to the set-top box market, which could help consumers watch TV on different devices and thus avoid paying cable box rental fees.
Cable TV industry lobby groups expressed some of the highest praise they can give for a Federal Communications Commission plan to bring competition to the set-top box market
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
But the cablecos just made the Cablecards a pita to install (some requiring a technician to come out to your house to install a simple card), and making the slot so hard to implement that only a few companies like Tivo even tried to support them, then adding in shit like SJV to make them useless for certain channels, then charging RENTAL FEES for the cards. The rental fee was the ballsiest move of them all. And they got away with it too, of course, because lobbyists and campaign brib....contributions.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
It's funny how most cable companies allow their subscribers to purchase their own cable modems and routers, but now those same companies balk at the idea of their subscribers buying their own set-top box.
will probably sink this. I can't imagine any of the Republican Candidates letting this slide. Hilary might (e.g. she might get lobbied harder by the folks that want to sell set top boxes). Bernie would tell the cable industry to go *bleep* themselves but he's got a snowball's chance in hell of getting the nomination.
:(... Thanks Obama.
Basically, don't bother getting too excited. This'll all be swept away when Obama leaves
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It's nice that the FCC is trying to bring about change, but device rental fees are a MASSIVE revenue stream for cable companies. IF they allow this, expect cable rates to go up $10/month. Or more.
Satellite tv will be next in the cross hairs for this as they do same thing but they are kinda worse.
There is no good reason for all of this proprietary technology.
Do you have any idea how long it took and how much effort they expended to make sure that the Cable Card standard was never actually usable? And this new standard basically says they have to pass the data to an outside provider without being able to force the electronics retailer to have to go to cable labs which helped to make sure the process is painful and you can't win without giving in?
My god, people might not have to spend $20 a month on a DVR they don't own!
The system would essentially replace CableCard with a software-based equivalent.
I see two possible problems with this idea:
1. Having any cable company install any proprietary software on any customer-owned computing device for any reason whatsoever.
2. If it's software-based, it'll be cracked and pirated within a month of release.
(Disclaimer: As if I give a rat's ass whether highway robber cable companies get pirated or not. Just sayin', though)
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Reading through the FCC's summary, I can't tell whether this is a good or a bad thing. In principle it sounds good, but certainly there's going to be some sort of certifications involved somewhere, and I doubt open source stuff like mythtv is going to be able to pass the requirements to get certified. Cable card may be less than ideal in implementation as far as open source is concerned, but at least there, if you've got a cooperating cable provider, you can access much of that content in it's digital form, which is better than the previous options of analog capture.
So the question we need to ask is whether, from an open source perspective, this is actually going to improve things for us (I'm definitely skeptical on that), keep it about the same, or make it worse.
The day I can pull the plug on renting a substandard device from a provider is the day I get freedom.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Cable wants to have a forced rent gateway for each home. Even if you are just an internet sub. Hell if you are an Comcast business sub with static ip's YOU MUST rent there hardware.
Comcast makes it very hard to get a working cable card and then they change like an $7-$8 outlet fee + card rent.
I'm sure this is one big reason cable companies don't want this. They wouldn't be able to take up half the on screen guide with ads.
comcast finds a way to mess that up as well. Some times when you own your own modem they mess up and still bill you for renting theirs.
If they uses the IPTV approach, then they could just leverage devices people already have, such as the Apple TV, an Android TV based device or maybe a tablet.
Maybe this bitter medicine may actually help cable companies wake up and improve their service and the way people watch the content? There are people who still like the programmed content stream, but not necessarily the limitations on which device they can watch it on.
One company they should be copying: http://www.free.fr/adsl/freebo... (just use Google translate). It may be solution limited to France, but I am envious every time I read their offering.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
They better do IPTV as well. As comcast and others can just switch from QAM to IPTV to keep there lockin or just Move HD to IPTV. Comcast MPEG2 HD trun off is having then dump a lot of old hardware and the newer MPEG4 HD boxes can do IP based tv.
I had troubles pairing my old Series 3 HD Tivo, requiring a visit from a Comcast technician. I currently have a Series 4 Premiere and have been able to perform a self-install without difficulty.
Why would I want to plug in a whatever box and watch a middle of whatever program it's showing at the time, interrupted by ads every 15 minutes? When technology is there to select exactly what I want to see and when. Even for live news/sports I may want to pause or rewind to see what I missed. Just give me well working apps and ability to subscribe to the ones that appeal to me.
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed new rules...
Former cable and wireless industry lobbyist Tom Wheeler proposed new rules that is making the cable companies whine and cry.
They must be wondering what their money got them. I guess Tom plans to retire after this. He is 69 years old, after all. Between this and net neutrality, he's doing a fine job warming his toes with all the bridges he's burning.
I believe I speak for everyone not in the Cable TV Industry.
Dear Cable TV Industry: fuck you. Up the ass. With a rusty spike.
Had analog cable, fed a few tv sets. Cable goes digital. Clear QAM - only premium channels are scrambled. The golden era. One day, all channels become scrambled, but you get a free box for a year. One year later, the box is $8 per month per TV. Boxes go back. There was no reason in my very suburban area to scramble everything....except to force me to rent a box to view a signal I *already paid for*. Double Dip ? I fought this off with cablecard devices until the cable co put a $6 per month charge for "sports programming". I'm not a fan, they would not remove the charge. Turns out I had to pay for ESPN, like it or not. Invested in a better router and repeater. Happily streaming from a variety of sources. Antenna on the roof like Gramps had gets me plenty to feed the DVRs. I still have to pay for the broadband, and the company increased the internet price $10 per month because I don't have "tv'. I have the least evil of the group, Cablevision, and they were pretty good with cable cards when I had the unicorn of the American electronics market, a Free Cable Ready DVR, the obsolete Sony HDD 250. It worked until Rovi killed the listing service a few years back. The "industry" has allowed Tivo to survive, as Tivo has a few key patents which have stifled anyone else, (even Sony!) It is beyond over due that there be privately owned DVR and cable card type devices. You can do this if you are computer savvy, but where are the set top boxes for everyone else at best buy ?
It will be interesting to see how the cable companies fight this. They are moving towards the actual box being rather stupid and all the heavy lifting being done on the back end "in the cloud." If you can buy an equivalent box, but you don't have access to their proprietary code, you're kinda screwed. I suspect that $9/month rental fee would remain and would be renamed a "software license fee" or somesuch.
Net gain for the consumer....zero.
The modem rental is part of the price, there isn't an extra charge for it on the business side. Now if you want to argue the static IP costs are extravagant I would agree but the equipment rental is not a big deal IMO.
I have a Comcast cable card. They charge $0.00 for it and pay me $2.50 per month to use it.
The modem rental is part of the bill, but separate from the service price. Modem rental just went up to $14.95 per month. This is with Comcast Business class. Static IP (5) are $24.99 per month
Switched Digital TV.. so the tuner leaves the house and goes upstream to the distribution layer.. and remove any CHANCE of unintended usage!
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
...being that my older Comcast DVR's used CableCard technology. If you looked on the back you could see the slots for them. Of course there was secret sauce in there that allowed OnDemand access and what-not that a Tivo+CC wouldn't do. But for all the pushback against CC's it seems like it probably saves them quite a bit of money as the cost of designing a carrier-locked box must be a lot lower for the OEM's if they can use CC as the starting point and lowest-common-denominator.
Of course, Comcast's new Xfinity platform (finally becoming a platform in addition to a brand) seems to be something altogether different, since they now essentially push the DVR storage back up into Comcast's private cloud. And near as I can tell there's no CC tech inside these new boxes, and for all I know use a completely different content delivery technology.
While I am certainly a supporter of having an open system where you might actually be able to buy a decent DVR that wasn't designed in 2003, I really think that they have missed the boat. People are cutting the cord left and right (I just did tonight as a matter of fact). With all of the content available online, why do we even need a dedicated STB with software decryption. Hell, Time Warner even has a Roku app that is free and gives you ALMOST all of their programming (and depending on your market even local channels). Sure a DVR would be nice but content is also On Demand online if you have a subscription. This would have been great in lieu of the CableCard but I think it is severely late to the game at this stage.
I have been deeply involved with Cable Card (happen to design Cable Card test system and leading a Cable Card project). I am now leading some DVB-CI+ project for making USB based Conditional Access Module (CAM is the generic name for CableCard like devices). The major issue in the US are operators which loooove so much milking their customer that they will NEVER EVER allow a system that will prevent them to do so. So if there is an initiative to make software based CAM make sure this thing will be carefully driven to end up in the wall. This has been done before with DCAS and will be done again. This is why the average cable bill is around 100$ in US while we pay half of that for premium package in Europe. European commission may be a bunch a picky buggers, they don't hesitate to slam the fingers of the ones who are abusing their dominant position.
they got away with it because we've been electing candidates that are further and further on the right wing ever since Clinton (Bill) moved the Dems that way so he could take the presidency. If you're gonna keep electing "pro-business" folks you shouldn't be surprised when they do things that are good for business. Consumer protections and competition aren't good for business. We like to think they are because we like to ignore just how few companies supply the goods and services we depend on. But even 'small' cable companies are multi-million dollar affairs. These days anything bigger than a cupcake factory is probably owned my a multi-national...
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If you're like me and get your TV and internet through a coaxial cable connected to a fiber network you should favor local loop unbundling. Make the local loop a public utility and let the content providers compete for my business, both internet and TV. Let the content providers pay the local loop utility for access to my business (yes I know they'd pass the cost on to us but as a utility the local loop would have regulated rates). Then you wouldn't have to regulate the content providers (and ex cable companies) at all. Wouldn't that be a free market?
I have a Tivo with a cable card. I can already access all my channels and all the Over the Top services (including Comcast's video on demand stuff and pay per view, if I wanted that.) This exists now. How is this different than that?
He's basically this generation's Walter Mondale. A nice guy who is completely unelectable. He's on record saying he's a socialist. That won't scare off any Dems, but it doesn't have to. It will scare the $h!t out of the the right wing baby boomers and get them out in droves voting for whatever the Republicans run (Probably Jeb or Rubio). American politics aren't about convincing people to vote _for_ you, they're about convincing people to vote against the other guy.
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The reason people bother with cable is the fact the selection of channels you get OTA is absolute garbage. The networks don't show anything worth showing anymore; and the "extra" channels are usually the same crappy reruns or foreign language programming.
There's also the fact a large majority of the people do not have the luck you have with digital TV. I live 25 miles from DC; if you assume that I get all the OTA DC channels and a good chunk of Baltimore stations you are horribly mistaken. I can get 1 broadcast out of DC and another from a tower five miles away. This leaves me with CBS and about 12 channels that are all foreign language. Sure, I get great signal reports on all of them; but the digital streams are completely useless after they've bounced around 5000 times. If an ATSC signal bounces even once, the decoder cannot handle it. I am not about to invest the thousands of dollars in installing a TV tower (which will probably meet local opposition ayway) or the equipment to put an antenna on the top of it with a rotator (coax is not cheap, and RG-6 is not suitable for UHF); especially considering the garbage I could get OTA.
It's great you don't need cable; it's also ironic you talk about streaming services as if they're all free. CBS charges, all the other content providers want verification of TV subscription before they'll let you view. The grass might be green where you are; but for myself, and a lot of people; if we didn't have cable, we'd be completely out of the loop.
CableCARD. But most cable companies do such a piss-poor job of supporting it, that the technology fails to work.
Fine. Maybe when your cable company is charging you $400/month for the same crap and the networks have shut off OTA for being non-profitable...will you be still calling it socialist.
Your hatred of Obama makes you blind to the fact no corporation is your friend; none of them care about you. All they see you as is a source of income; and a cable company would gladly take your money without giving you service if they could figure out a way to legally do it.
I don't want to live in a world where I'm under the total control of a heartless corporation. It's bad enough I only have two choices for TV/Internet/Phone as well as most other things in this country. Where the fuck is the competitiveness? I thought open free markets were supposed to embrace competition; not merge and get rid of it.
You're just a source of money to them. Take a look at any water utility that shuts people off for non-payment. IF you can legally shut off what could be considered a basic requirement to live; then there's a problem.
IF you think that's the way it should be; then you're a horrible person...and your title of Anonymous Coward says everything it needs to say about you.
People are being gouged on the programming cost not the set top. A typical person would spend anywhere from 80-130 per month on programming and around 5-20 for the set tops. Any cut to the set top price would amount to little in the way of savings for the average person.
The government should be doing something about the practice of content providers forcing cable companies to carry their programming in oversized packages that few people want. Give us more choices there!
I've got FiOS.
Verizon will gladly rent you a router for $9.95/month (or something); or they will allow you to buy one of theirs. Don't want one of theirs? Then you're welcome to buy any off-the-shelf router for your internet. If you signed up years ago; Verizon outright gave you the router.
AFAIK, it's the same with the biz class as home class.
I think the larger point you should be yelling about isn't the fact you have to pay for Comcast's hardware; but like that Comcast is your only option for services. They're getting away with crap like that because they're a monopoly; and they've likely paid off your state/local legislators to ensure their monopoly will stand nice and legal.
Rental fees for equipment is ridiculous. I have Comcast and my equipment charges look like this: "Additional Outlet" = $19.90 "Additional Outlet" = $3.99 DVR = $9.95 "Digital Converter" = $2.50 "Does Not Print" = $1.50 = $37.84 Equipment Fees I then pay sales tax on this stuff, so add another $3.12 and we're looking at about $41/mo in rent on their crappy devices. I have an HD DVR box and 2 satellite "companion" boxes (basically just MoCa clients to the actual HDDVR). I have yet to get a straight answer on what all these items are. WTF is "Does Not Print"?? Anyway, this hashes out to about $490 a year in rental fees. I own my own cable modem, otherwise that would be another $14/mo. tacked on. At my previous residence, I used WMC and a Ceton CableCard tuner, with Xbox 360s at each TV as clients. I was a little spoiled with that setup by not having to pay for additional outlets to access the content I already pay for. Since the move, I have spent 4+ hours on the phone trying to get the CableCard functional again and have yet to succeed. I opted to rent set top boxes to keep the wife and kiddo happy. Their X1 platform is a joke too, as I can't remove listings in the program guide for channels I don't receive. I might just take the hit and get a Tivo Bolt and 2 minis. While that hardware/subscription would be paid for in 2 years, who's to say I won't have the same issues trying to get the CableCard to work in it too.